is SqlSessionStateProviderAsync putting data into the SQL Database?

Question

I'm attempting to convert a stand alone web store app into a web farm using SqlSessionStateProviderAsync V2.0 to replace the in server memory version of the session state. Currently the load balancer uses persistence to keep the user going to the same web server. But what happens is a server gets hammered by something, say a bad acting user/web crawler and spikes that server and slows it down a lot, but the other servers are sitting there unable to help.

As I understand the developer, by converting the in server memory state to SqlSessionStateProviderAsync and moving it to a SQL server back end with repositoryType="InMemoryDurable" we can release the need for the servers having to be persistance and be SQL stable if the SQL server goes down as well.

So I did that.... and got it running... but..

It seems to me that I should be able to to query [dbo].[ASPStateTempSessions] or [dbo].[ASPStateTempApplications] with a simple select top (1000) query against either of these and see some data in the tables. But nothing appears in either of these tables.

So either I'm misunderstanding the most simplest of points, or the data is going somewhere else.

How can I determine if the configuration is operating correctly and the session state is actually going to the SQL server properly?